Next to doing a Photo Polymer course with Martyn Grimmer at Spike Print Studios in Bristol I also attend one day workshops to try out a wider range of alternative and old photographic processes. One of them was on the Wet Plate Collodion method another on Bromoil printing.
Wet Plate Collodion was invented by Frederick Scott Archer (1814-1857) around 1850. He wanted to create a set of images of his sculptures to share with prospective clients and found the then existing processes, Daguerre’s or Talbot’s Calotype , not particularly useful. This is because some could not easily be multiplied and others didn’t offer a detailed enough reproduction. To understand the technique better, I took part in a workshop led by Tim Pearse at Bristol Folk House. Tim taught us how to make Ambrotypes, a type of Wet Plate Collodion where the collodion is applied directly onto specially prepared glass plates. I ought to mention that Tim runs Negative Thinking, a community darkroom in Bristol, and is a true master of this process and has exhibited at the National Photography Gallery in London.
This practice as such involves quite intricate steps from pouring collodion whilst carefully balancing a glass plate on your fingertips to silver coating in a special dip tank. It is rapid and in an uncanny way feels closer to Polaroid than to role film based photography. Why? The plate once coated with silver gets placed in its wet state straight into a camera and is then exposed and developed immediately. That means if you wanted to take photographs in other locations than your studio you would need to take a mobile darkroom with you. For me the best thing about Wet Plate Collodion is how the plate and with it the latent image is developed. This step can be done in daylight and the tank has a window to observe the process. How the photograph begins to appear is almost like alchemy and I will post a short video on Instagram to share this my experience (@in_search_of_place). Yet the glass plate as such has another trick up its sleeve; that is when viewed on black background it appears as a positive whereas when placed on white it is a negative. What’s not to like about it? The Collodion liquid used to coat the plates gives off quite a lot of vapes. This didn’t feel very healthy nor environmentally friendly.
The Bromoil printing process was invented by C Welborne Piper beginning of the 20th Century. I was able to join a demonstration and workshop held at the Royal Photographic Society in Bristol. It was facilitated by the Bromoil Circle that consists currently of 17 members in the UK. The Circle recently donated a large collection of old Bromoil prints to the archive of the RPS and are keen to pass the technique on in order to preserve it.
There are several steps involved to create a Bromoil print. Firstly you need to make an over – developed that means slightly denser and greyer B/W print on photographic paper. Then you have to bleach this print so that it turns more or less white leaving behind only a trace of the photographic image. Then, using special brushes, you re-ink the image. This inked image is usually transferred onto archival paper creating a reverse positive print. Even though the steps are in essence simple, the knowledge and art lies in its application. In comes down to how to bleach and treat the paper and how to apply the ink. In the workshop we were given an already bleached print so that we could try out the inking process. I found this not easy at all and to me what ink and paper do feels very uncontrollable. One member told me that it took her a year to get the hang of it and I truly believe it. Yet once the image started to appear it was hugely satisfying and I felt, for am moment at least, that I had tamed the proverbial lion. Overall, I have loved the drama of the process and think it has a lot of potential to be used in a less traditional manner.
Having being able to try out these ancient techniques was really thought-provoking and at times scarily exciting. Both processes are interesting and valuable in their own right and I have to think whether and how I can take them further. I feel I need to experiment more and see what will happen.
In the next few weeks I will explore more environmentally friendly processes and have just booked myself a place on mud photography with Sophie Sherwood.
